As the first quarter of 2022 rapidly approaches its end, many Seattle companies have the opportunity to reflect on the current status of this year’s goals and analyze what’s working or what could stand to be tweaked.
The final stretch also gives employees the chance to reflect on the trajectory of their careers. Sensible questions include “Are my current projects in sync with my internal passions?” and “Do I feel supported through my team and company culture?” For team members at seven local tech companies, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
For Adam Shannon, it’s the freedom to organize his working schedule that fuels his productivity. As a senior software engineer on a remote team at Moov Financial, he’s encouraged by leadership to respect the creative aspects of his work, which doesn’t always fit into a traditional eight-hour day.
“They trust us to work how and when we want to work, which makes a huge difference when you’re juggling families, health and other obligations,” Shannon said.
For Mireya Peralez, lead voice at international payments company Remitly, personally relating to the mission of serving immigrants drives her work as part of a team and as a member of the community. “Many of our employees not only believe in Remitly’s vision, but are personally impacted by it and proud to help this vision come to life,” she said.
Like Moov and Remitly, companies across Seattle are finding success as the year progresses thanks to their unique company cultures, groundbreaking projects and benefits packages dedicated to elevating the employee experience. Built In Seattle sat down with Shannon, Peralez and five other company leaders to learn more about their hiring plans for 2022 — and why job seekers should be intrigued.
What they do: Remitly lets users send money internationally across different platforms, including mobile, with fair exchange rates and low fees.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
Remitly is a company that serves immigrants, with a large percentage of its employees who are either immigrants themselves or can very personally relate to the immigrant experience. That means many of our employees, including myself, not only believe in Remitly’s vision — to transform the lives of immigrants and their families by providing the most trusted financial services on the planet — but are personally impacted by it and proud to help this vision come to life.
Another thing that makes working here special is that diversity, equity and inclusion is one of Remitly’s foundational pillars. We have 11 affinity groups that celebrate diversity, create space for connecting and learning, and promote allyship.
Everything from our brand personality to our new color palette was inspired by and celebrates our customers’ vibrant cultures.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
As a creative copywriter, helping develop Remitly’s new brand guidelines has been one of the most exciting projects of my career.
Everything from our brand personality to our new color palette was inspired by and celebrates our customers’ vibrant cultures, the places they call home, and how they stay connected to their loved ones. This total immersion was a great reminder of how resilient the immigrant community is and how privileged we are to serve them.
While brand guidelines are often thought of as guiding how we present ourselves to our customers, it also defines how we talk about Remitly within our teams or to external partners. In order to support our brand evolution, I’ve recently started hosting Brand Voice office hours. It’s a time reserved for employees to ask questions regarding Remitly’s tone of voice, brand positioning, messaging hierarchy, general writing style or for people simply seeking a soundboard. It’s not only proved to be a very productive hour each week — it’s been a wonderful forum to connect with others who are passionate about expressing our brand in a consistently meaningful way.
What they do: Tango Card is an information technology company that combines easy-to-use technology, a proprietary e-gift card and a donation catalog to deliver reward solutions.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
The challenge with culture is that you can’t get a committee together, plan exactly what makes your culture, then magically have it. A great culture is built by the human interactions that are taken at all levels of the organization. During my introduction to Tango Card five years ago, I had a human interaction that illustrated the culture.
I moved to Seattle from Texas for Tango Card. I wanted to get to know the people that I was going to be spending my working time with. I planned on chartering a fishing boat and seeing if anyone wanted to join me for a day of fishing. Three engineers and David Leeds, our CEO, responded. I’m not used to a CEO being willing to jump at spending the day with a new hire. We had an exceptionally pleasant day fishing, just being humans. That willingness and openness showed me the culture that I was joining. It showed me how David thinks about his employees. That openness and the importance of human interactions has continued for the past five years with many new and interesting people. The human interactions make Tango Card’s culture great.
A great culture is built by the human interactions that are taken at all levels of the organization.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
I was recently promoted to engineering director with a focus on quality, and my coolest ongoing project is building a new quality engineering pillar focused on our tooling, coding practices, architecture, testing and reporting. Looking at the more holistic view with dedicated leadership around the overall quality of our products is a daunting task, and has both non-technical and highly technical aspects to it.
There’s a ton of complexity that goes into building high-quality products. That complexity is compounded by us having embraced a microservices architecture with full CICD. When you embrace a microservice architecture, it raises the question of if you should do full end-to-end testing or instead, focus deeply on each microservice with contract validation between the services. For CICD, a developer can hit merge and that code can be in production in 20-40 minutes. Are the seatbelts tight enough and the quality practices good enough to have 5-10 releases per day? It’s a big challenge, it’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to be cool!
What they do: Navigating Cancer is an informational management platform engaging and connecting cancer patients to their care. The platform enables patients to be a part of their care journey, from registration and appointment reminders to a messaging platform ensuring patients are always in the know.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
It feels like everyone really takes time to appreciate the contributions we all make to move the company forward. In the first six months that I have been at NC, there have been several places in which others called out my contributions. This has happened in sprint review, a ShoutOuts channel, direct messages, break room chats in the office and Kudos rewards. It’s a contagious culture and gets me excited about the work others are doing and to share appreciation for them as well. I think this really helps build a sense of community and makes it a great place to work!
I love always having the choice every day to pick what environment is best for me to work.”
What’s one company resource, program or benefit that has really enhanced your experience as an employee?
I really enjoy the hybrid office model and that the employee has freedom to decide where to work. I really appreciate being able to pick which days to work from home so I can watch over the pets when no one is home.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, many people come to the office and enjoy a catered meal. It’s fun to go into the office on these days because there are more people to meet and discuss topics in person. I find these days often lead to conversations I would never have had virtually, and grow my awareness of what others are doing in the organizations. Sometimes these conversations uncover new opportunities and collaborations.
Ultimately, the work-from-anywhere policy combined with events that encourage team members to come into the office is an incredible benefit. I love always having the choice every day to pick what environment is best for me to work.
What they do: With tools to support the full-spectrum leasing process — from vacancy marketing to occupant correspondence — Knock is partnering with leasing teams to reduce spend and improve productivity.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
The people at Knock are so genuine and thoughtful, which really makes the culture here special. Whether it be Hillary remembering my dietary preferences for our weekly office lunches, Tim giving me a gift card to his favorite plant store so I can fill my new Seattle apartment with greenery, or someone like Moriah or Harrison pulling my introverted self into a conversation. Since my first day, I have felt that everyone was excited for me to be a part of the team. It’s definitely a warm and welcoming culture that I feel so lucky to be a part of.
Since my first day, I have felt that everyone was excited for me to be a part of the team.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
One of the really cool things that I’m currently working on is a discovery research project where I get to talk directly with our customers to understand the future of the multifamily industry. It’s a really unique opportunity where their software needs are actually helping to shape the business model and vice versa. Innovation and insightful collaboration at its finest!
What they do: Nintex is a leader in process intelligence and automation. The company’s no-code workflow automation platform aims to transform the way people work by streamlining simple to sophisticated business processes.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
One of the reasons Nintex is a great place to work is because of our core tenet: “Don’t wait.” Software development at Nintex takes place in a rapidly changing environment, with improvements made available to our technologies and processes each day. Keeping up with these advancements is a challenge, which is why I personally resonate with the “Don’t wait” core tenet. This working principle empowers Nintex team members to seek out improvements and go above and beyond their everyday working life for the betterment of themselves and the overall company.
Combined with a flat organizational structure, our engineers can prototype ideas and make improvements where they deem necessary to support the overall value of our Nintex products. For example, I am currently working on a proof of concept to validate the benefits of leveraging micro frontends for the next generation of our process management capability — Nintex Promapp® — to enhance our development scalability. The opportunity to explore potential enhancements motivates me to seek out areas of improvement, instead of letting our technology become stale. I couldn’t recommend a better core tenet than “Don’t wait” to turn a business around.
The opportunity to explore potential enhancements motivates me to seek out areas of improvement, instead of letting our technology become stale.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
Recently, I have thoroughly enjoyed implementing the second generation of Nintex Promapp®’s Process Variation Management (PVM2) module. As an engineer, I often find myself reflecting on past projects, focusing on areas which could have been improved using knowledge and experience I have since gained. PVM2 is the perfect project to satiate this hunger for improvement. From a product perspective, PVM2 offered the chance to consider all the shortcomings of the first generation of the module and design a true successor which mitigates these weaknesses with an improved user experience.
From a technical perspective, PVM2 required a solid foundation to construct complex business logic operations and intuitive user interfaces. This provided the business case for a ground up rewrite of the process editor, a central aspect of the Nintex Promapp® product, from legacy ASP.NET MVC Razor pages and jQuery to new React components and RESTful APIs. The combination of opportunities for technical and product improvements really scratched the itch I have for constant improvement and was a significant source of motivation for my contribution as a software engineer at Nintex.
What they do: Stackline enables businesses to gain insights on sales metrics, consumer search volumes, and campaign results. By compiling this information through Stackline, teams can make adjustments and refine their marketing strategies moving forward.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
Stackline is a special place, full of gritty problem solvers that keep us on the cutting edge. We are solving the hardest problems for our clients and constantly bringing exciting, new products to market. Our culture is built on a foundation of incredibly smart people who challenge each other to drive not just business growth, but innovation as well.
I am on a team that recently launched our first consumer product, Brandclub, into the market. Brandclub allows consumers to earn cash back by shopping the brands they love, and it allows brands to interact directly with their loyal customers. The app streamlines consumer shopping, rewarding buyers every time they shop and engage. Throughout our launch there were many moving parts. We had to work as a team to ensure our work streams were in sync to provide the best customer experience for our users. The in-it-together nature of our company drove our team to execute effectively.
Brandclub is a bold bet that we believe will revolutionize how consumers shop and how brands connect with their customers. It is a principal example of what we do at Stackline — invent, iterate and execute in ways the industry has never seen before.
Through development seminars and management trainings we empower our employees to grow as leaders in the organization.”
What’s one company resource, program or benefit that has really enhanced your experience as an employee?
Stackline encourages employees to let their creativity run wild and execute on ideas that have clear influence on business outcomes. The company encourages individuals to wear many hats, work cross-functionally and contribute ideas to take Stackline to the next level. This has personally resonated with me since my early tenure with the organization.
Shortly after I joined in 2019, my colleague Reed Buchanan and I refined Stackline’s training and development program. This initiative was an effort at creating a more robust onboarding plan to equip new hires in our consulting organization with the skills and retail acumen they needed to be successful in their role. The program has now been scaled across the organization, touching all verticals, geographic locations and job levels.
As Stackline continues to grow in headcount, we are also focused on nurturing non-managing leaders into management roles across the organization. Through development seminars and management trainings we empower our employees to grow as leaders in the organization. Each year we add more to our training and development program to increase its scale and impact. We are excited for what’s to come in 2022!
What they do: Moov Financial provides a platform for developers looking to embed payment functionality into their products.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
The way Moov treats employees, community members and customers is second to none. From day one, we have put our values and people above revenue. Every decision we make upholds those values.
For example, we “give first” by publicly sharing our open source libraries because being radically transparent is uncommon in fintech. Internally, those values translate into helping each other and communicating openly. For example, our CEO and leadership team reply to questions, shout-outs or updates in our team and #org-ask-me-anything channels.
As a remote team, we’re also given a lot of trust paired with flexible schedules, tasks and decisions. Our leaders “respect the craft,” which means they understand that every job requires a mix of creativity, artistry and logic. Creativity isn’t something you can schedule between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. They trust us to work how and when we want to work, which makes a huge difference when you’re juggling families, health and other obligations.
Creativity isn’t something you can schedule between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.”
What’s one company resource, program or benefit that has really enhanced your experience as an employee?
Moov prioritizes our people. Having flexible hours is a significant benefit because it means they trust you to make the best choices for you and your family. It also allows you to travel and work from different locations, which is a nice perk. Moov also offers unlimited PTO, but unlike other companies, they require everyone to take a minimum of three weeks — and one week must be five days in a row.
Moov cares about our overall health, too. With our employee assistance program, we get additional benefits like free mental health visits, financial planning help, access to lawyers and more. Knowing that I’m moving to a new state soon, it’s nice to know I have the time, flexibility and support to make it happen. Plus, I’m looking forward to using Moov’s impressive home office stipend for my new office.
